When the crowd screamed “ga re tsamaye rona, re robala mo!” they weren’t kidding; two straight days of pure fun, like they say on the streets of GC, “re aikgasa!” When we checked in at the Mmopane Farm just outside Gabs on Saturday afternoon, the place looked so deserted one would have thought the show was destined to flop. Fast forward 6 hours to around 8pm and HHP was on stage doing it like a boss, leaving the crowd buzzing like a swarm of bees.

He went through a couple of hit singles from his abundant discography as the largely sober crowd sang along. When he dished out his current hit, Bosso KeMang the crowd went berserk, and set the mood for the following two days! The line up was so star-studded we could fill a page just name-dropping, but what won the nights were House music groups. The sound could have been better, largely because the stage was downwind. But the beat went on.

Black Motion closed the first day of the extravaganza. The house duo was on stage just as the sun was rising and for a full two hours, they spoke the language of bass and drums to the hearts of house junkies. Nobody does it better than these guys. When they played Mala le Mogodu, the now liquored-up crowd cheered on like they were watching a spinning car with the driver standing beside it.

Sunday started off slow, with activities like Spin City’s car spinning keeping the crowd entertained while we waited for the fun to re-begin. And when it did, the likes of Black Coffee, Big Nuz and Ricky Lamar killed it. When the sun rose, it found Liquideep on stage, tearing it up with a live guitar that had the crowd in a frenzy!

“That song whch makes u wan get drunk rytaway! #via orlandomaan!imfilin dizzy” posted Pato Sugar Mongwaketse. Throughout out the festival, the song that’s currently driving every one crazy, Dj Mahoota and Vetkoek ft Dr Malinga’s Via Orlando, kept coming back again and again, and the crowd would go wild like they just heard it for the first time.

Organized by Dladleng Entertainment and Lovesoul SA, the first of its kind festival in Botswana left many lost for words. “Kebo Lil Wayne, Apricot, Le bo Lil Dee, whoooo Mázphuzeni” sang Khumo Apricot Shadrack “Oh, what a blast I had, I’d gladly pay P400 for this kind of entertainment.” She went on, replacing the lyrics from Big Nuz’s Stingray with her name and that of her friends in a way that only a happy soul would.

“We need more of these shows” said Tshepo Lil Dee Monnaesi, “They should bring it back soon.”

Wassup readers, hope you all enjoyed your long weekend, why ask, we know you did!! Anyway, this just to let you know that we have lots of pictures and videos from the various gigs that were hosted over the independence holidays. We’ll post the pictures on our facebook page and the videos on our youtube channel. Follow us on twitter to keep regularly updated and look out for our October issue of the paper when it hits the streets!!

It begins with you launching your internet browser – you type www, and without realising it you finish with facebook.com. You are part of the generation that only uses the internet for facebook or other social media like Twitter. According to the World Internet Statistics website, as of June 2011, Botswana recorded 121 600 internet users and 167 180 facebook subscribers. Allowing for a slight margin of error and for subscribers on the free facebook mobile platform, this means that nearly everybody with internet access has a facebook account. Well people, there’s lots more stuff you can do on the internet and we’re going to give you a few examples.

Read the news
The youth have been accused of not reading the news and staying in touch with current affairs and understandably so. Our lives are different; we’re constantly on the go so we don’t have time to sit down and read a newspaper. Well, here’s the solution, visit our local newspapers’ websites (google them) and find out what’s going on in your country. Keeping abreast of current issues not only helps you make important decisions like who to vote for but it also helps in the decisions you make on a daily basis (imagine driving somewhere only to discover the road is closed due to construction, and it turns out EVERYONE knew but you!). Even on our phones, we can access the news; both Orange and Mascom have facilities for reading the news while you’re on the go. The lazier ones of you out there are like: “but nowadays, even newspapers and tv news channels have facebook pages”. The whole point of this article is to discourage complete dependence on facebook for all of your internet needs.

Read a book
Very similar to number one yet so different that it deserves its own paragraph. Not all of us have the time or the access to a library to borrow a book and quite frankly, most libraries in Bots don’t have the kind of books one can read leisurely. Buying a book is out of the question for a lot us because we either can’t afford it or will not spend P200 on a book that a friend will borrow and never return. The solution is simple; look for free books you can either download or read online (especially if you have an iPad or Galaxy Tab or something fancy like that). Even if you are to buy an e-book, we guarantee it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Read a book people, and sharpen your minds. Broaden your horizons and expand your knowledge base. Besides it’s a good way to kill time when there’s a power cut (unless you forgot to charge your iPad, Galaxy Tab, laptop etc, or maybe you don’t have one).

Listen to the radio
This can be done while doing numbers 1 and 2. If you have iTunes, you simply click on radio and a list will appear of radio stations streaming live on the internet. Windows Media Player can also access live radio from the internet. However, the ease of access to this feature relies on which version of the programme (and of windows) you’re running. There are also other internet radio stations that do not appear in such lists such as Gabz fm online or UB’s Trail fm but you can still listen to them on the internet. Gone are the days you needed an actual radio to listen to your favourite radio station; now you can do that while you surf the internet.

Download stuff (legally)
A lot of you already access the internet to download music, movies and software but are you doing it legally? Doubtful. There are lots of legal downloads available on the internet; for example, most local artists have a ReverbNation account or a SoundCloud account and they’ll have one or two songs available for free download. The rest you HAVE TO BUY; don’t be cheap. When it comes to software, we recommend you try out free freeware or open source software; you can get software that does anything from typing documents to making music without paying a single thebe. Some of these wares have an option for developing (if you’re into that programming stuff) so you can personalise the software and have it work the way you want it to work.

Senior School and University girls go wild at the “Are you ready for Liquid Deep?” chant as the MC hypes up the crowd. A show in Bots would be incomplete without a Dj.

Djs are so popular that it’s common to come across facebook status updates or tweets in which ladies say things like, “I don’t care what people say, Dj Fresh can impregnate me and leave the following day. All I want is his child!” DJs may be very well be the new rockstars.

Affirming this popularity, a show without a Dj is like a church service without a pastor. It just does’nt make sense. Big names come to town weekend after weekend, playing sold-out venues and leaving unforgetable memories in their wake, much the same way Germany goes gaga when rockstars like Sum 41, Metallica, blink 182 or Linkin Park make pit-stops in Deutschland. In the past eight months, Botswana has hosted internationally renowned names like Harrison Crump (who has forged a respectable friendship and working relationship with Groove Cartel’s Dj German Dollar), Rocco, Ralf Gum, DJ Fresh, Liquid Deep, Mi Casa, Spirit Chaser and Black Coffee just to mention but a few.

The local industry has done well in brewing its own mix masters. Big names like Groove Cartel had the honour of touring with Millionnaire superstar Pharrel Williams. Groovysouls is currently the biggest party thrower in the BW and names like Ricky Lamar have been nominated for international Dj awards.

As it is the norm with “in things”, everybody seems to be jumping into the trend. As of July 2012, there seems to be more Djs than people willing to check out a Dj playing. Scandals are flying thick around as well. 3 respectable mix masters are currently in a heated beef over a form 5 student who apparently managed to sleep with all of them in a space of 3 weeks; talk about sex, drugs and rock and roll, as the saying goes for Rockstars.

Perhaps we should celebrate this trend. We should dedicate it to one of the countries founding Djs; Dj Za Kickin Cletic, the albino mix master who collapsed on stage and passed away shortly after; talk about dying doing what you love.

With so much of the limelight being enjoyed by DJs, a lot of people have flocked to join the trade, many of them without any real talent or originality. It has thus become important to differentiate between the real scratch artists and the fly-by-night turntable owners. One of the country’s most popular DJs is Ricky Lamar, a house DJ born and bred in GC, who has become a common feature in the line ups of BW’s biggest gigs and was recently nominated for an award by a South African DJ magazine. When BW Now! asked for his take on what separates a real DJ from the wannabes, Lamar said: “The way I see it, a real DJ is not here to look for fame; ideally, a DJ wants to please the crowd, not himself. He plays a show, not because he’s gonna get girls or cause he’s gonna get paid a lot of money, but because he wants to entertain people.”

Despite having a smart dress sense, manyora aren’t known for smart life decisions, which is why dropping out of school is usually a must-do for the machesa-maestros; show me a lenyora with a degree and I’ll show you an authentic picture of a Moloi flying on a needle.
Being void of a solid educational background, the manyora lifestyle is largely based on crime (if you’re offended you’re probably a suburban kid with grasshoppers who confuses himself for a real lenyora).The crime usually entails stealing cellphones (at knife point, preferably an okapi, widely known as the lenyora weapon of choice) or being a conman, facilitating sales where victims pay but never get their products; if they do, the product doesn’t work! Selling weed is another possible source of income; whatever you do as a lenyora, don’t get a job, unless that job is bragging about your rowdy lifestyle over instrumentals, as a kwaito star!!

As a lenyora, your natural enemies are the ma-cat, a group of unruly characters you hate because they walk and talk like black Americans when usually they’re just boThabo le Pako from Molepolole (Despite introducing themselves as P-Money and T-Dog). Ofcourse, it’s not like you’ve stayed true to your mother tongue – you try to speak zulu and behave like a Joburg tsotsi – but the ma-cats copycat behaviour just doesn’t sit well with your “original” way of life! Now that you quit your job and have bought an okapi, which words should you learn to sell yourself to your new friends; everyone who is not into a life of crime will now be referred to as moshishi, watch south African programs and polish your zulu!